Gender details needn’t be given to buy train tickets: EU court

Consumers need not tell French rail service SNCF whether they go by gender tags Mr or Mrs when they purchase a ticket online, the EU’s highest court in Luxembourg ruled today.

The judgment followed a challenge against SNCF Connect’s online purchase process by French association Mousse before the French data protection authority CNIL, claiming it was against the EU’s privacy rules. 

Mousse – which advocates for LGBT+ rights — argued that asking users for a title, which corresponds to a gender identity, does not meet General Data Protection Regulation’s (GDPR) requirements on minimising data retention. The act obliges companies to collect the least possible data about a data subject. 

SNCF said that knowing the gender of the customer allows it to personalise communications and to adapt services such as providing access to women-only carriages on night trains.

In 2021, the CNIL rejected Mousse’s complaint, arguing that the practice did not constitute an infringement of the GDPR. The association appealed that decision at the French Conseil d’État, which in turn, asked the EU’s Court of Justice for a clarification.

The Court has now ruled in line with an opinion of its Advocate-General Maciej Szpunar last July, which held that “personalisation of the commercial communication based on presumed gender identity according to a customer’s title is not indispensable in order to enable a rail transport contract.”  

Alternatively, the railway company could choose to communicate based on generic, inclusive expressions when addressing a customer, “which have no correlation with the presumed gender identity,” the court said.  

Association Mousse said in a statement that “European citizens can [now]  invoke it before national courts, and all public and private entities are bound to comply. In practical terms, this judgment has direct effects but also opens the door to indirect effects that herald major progress for LGBT+ rights throughout the EU.”